Metadata Monday: Is Pinterest Crowdsourcing Data?

By now, I am sure you are all aware of Pinterest - the well designed curation site allowing ease of sharing or as they put it "Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web."

Pinterest is being touted as the next big thing in social media and as exemplifying a cosmic shift from search to discovery. While I have long been a fan of using social bookmarking tools like Diigo and Delicious to collect content for my blog, Pinterest takes this type of curation to a new more visually appealing level.

I think I will find it useful in organizing ideas and inspirations for shopping and reading and movie watching in my personal life and it is fascinating to see what my friends pin - from my shoe obsessed art director pal with impeccable taste to photography buffs and crafty crafters.

I can't help but wonder, however, if the rich data collected from the participants will somehow mean that now we are all crowdsourcing market research. Like a giant digital focus group, we are telling advertisers what interests us and doesn't. I see a future where my sidebars become even more Orwellian.

Los Angeles Public Library: Ansel Adams

Street scenes instead of iconic landscapes on view now at the Los Angeles Public Library.

 

5 Things Thursday: UE, Secure Passwords and Erin Dorney

Here are your 5 things:

1. Check out Walking Paper's User Experience grab bag.
2. Concerned about password security? Here is an apt infographic.
3. Read this interview with Library Scenester Erin Dorney.
4. Sick of SOPA? If not, here is the creative community perspective.
5. Want to be an international librarian? Hack Lib School has you covered!

Taxonomy Bootcamp

Did you know that there is an annual Taxonomy Bootcamp? Well, mark your calendars for October 16th and 17th, 2012.

I have been considering conferences or events that might prove useful to my position as a digital asset manager. Having attended DAM events in the past, focusing on one aspect of DAM like taxonomy and controlled vocabulary may prove beneficial.

Check out the astute observations on The Taxonomy Blog gleaned from the 2011 event Tweets. Sounds like trends at the event included using facets or term sets for ease of updates, the challenge and necessity of incorporating social media (folksonomy) into taxonomies, and taxonomy tools.

 

 

Metadata Monday: Basics of Metadata Standards

Are you in the enviable planning stage of a DAM project considering metadata fields? If so, check out this information from Another DAM blog and podcast on metadata standards.

Henrik de Gyor touches upon some of the core resources for metadata planning including the NISO guide to understanding metadata. This comprehensive guide covers metadata standards, creating metadata and other related topics like interoperability.

A newer valuable resource is the Visualization of the Metadata Universe by Jen Riley. "The sheer number of metadata standards in the cultural heritage sector is overwhelming, and their inter-relationships further complicate the situation. This visual map of the metadata landscape is intended to assist planners with the selection and implementation of metadata standards."

Examining these resources when planning metadata will provide a solid foundation from which you can incorporate and create elements specific to your organization's needs. One of my favorite tactics is creating a "metadata mashup" by combining elements from several different schemas in a customized manner. For instance, I like to use Dublin Core, IPTC and VRA Core for a lot of image related cataloging.

 

5 Things Thursday: SOPA, Taxonomy and Generation Flux

Here are five things to explore this week:

1. Hack Library School comments on the SOPA/PIPA situation.
2. Want to read about the Library of Congress Flickr experiment?
3. Check out the basics of taxonomy use and maintenance.
4. What is generation flux?
5. Interested in best practices for email images?

Metadata Monday: Dublin Core Wikis

Check out these comprehensive wikis created by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. The User Guide provides an in-depth overview of Dublin Core and linked data.

Creating Metadata continues the saga, going into detail about the process of producing resources, properties and values for each DC element. The tables and examples are invaluable.

Finally, Publishing Metadata explains how to properly utilize DCMI metadata as linked data, code and all.

Going beyond the information available on the main Dublin Core website, this series of wikis really gets to the core of Dublin Core.

5 Things Thursday: How a Book is Made, Recipes and Shhhhh!

Here are your weekly five things:

1. Ever wonder why it is so hard to create a digital recipe collection?
2. Want to see how a book is made?
3. Do you crave three seconds of quiet, information-free, Tweet free, text and email free time?
4. Want to see what people use CONTENTdm for?
5. Do you need a couple DAM tips from Widen?

BONUS: Non-Librarian jobs for LIS grads...

 

Metadata Monday: Taxonomy of Perfume

Admittedly, sometimes I get bored reading about metadata projects and this week I really wanted to write something fluffy. Imagine my excitement when I stumbled across a project devoted to creating metadata and controlled vocabulary for a perfume museum.

Fragonard’s Musee de Parfum and the The??a??tre des Capucines Museum in Paris offer unique explorations into the world of perfumes. A proposal by Jessica Mlotkowski, MLIS candidate at the University of North Carolina, outlines a plan for creating a taxonomy for the classification of traditional and modern perfumes for the museum and its various online collections and retail needs.

The approach to creating this custom thesaurus stems from a combination of sources including the usual suspects like the LCSH, the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus Online and the UK Archival Thesaurus (UKAT) as well as retail sites like Sephora.com and Perfumes.com. Classification graphs from the Farina-Haus Fragrance Museum’s research webpage were incorporated.

An analysis of the 11th edition of the H&R Genealogy of Feminine Fragrances and Michael Edward’s 1983 fragrance wheel were thrown into the mix and the resulting thesaurus is pungent with possibility. I think anyone attempting to create a taxonomy and apply metadata to a specialized collection like a perfume collection can benefit from reading this creative and thoughtful paper.

 

5 Things Thursday: Bowie, EXIF Tracking and Taxonomy

Here are five things to start off 2012:

1. Read about lost David Bowie footage on Moving Image Archive News.
2. Aaron Tay offers great tips on managing content across multiple devices.
3. How can EXIF tracking help photographers recover lost or stolen cameras?
4. Register for a webinar on the business value of taxonomy.
5. Why what you didn't learn in library school may not matter.

Metadata Monday: Rate Your DAM Experience

Another DAM Blog featured a fantastic list of the levels of digital asset management experience a couple weeks ago. Including common DAM tasks ranging from basic search, applying metadata, running reports and setting user roles all the way up to more complex endeavors like training users and justifying ROI, this list offers a valuable gauge to assess your own experience level working with DAM systems.

Each level can have additional layers as well. For instance, uploading and applying metadata can be as simple as loading images with metadata embedded or as complicated as employing a different tool in the DAM workflow prior to ingestion (we use Lightroom) and bulk editing some metadata fields after ingestion. For more on uploading and metadata, see this in depth explanation also on Another DAM Blog.

I was pleased to see that I have pretty much touched upon each level. I could use more experience justifying the value of the DAM system I administer. How does your DAM experience stack up?